


Loki is as Loki does

by Yenneffer



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Asgard, Brothers, Chitauri - Freeform, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Gen Fic, Loki dreams of storms, Mentions of Odin, POV Third Person, References to Torture, Sibling Rivalry, Warning: Loki, a bag full of cats is canon, and mind-fuckery, but really the focus is Loki Loki Loki, other Avengers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 15:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yenneffer/pseuds/Yenneffer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The way from and back to Asgard. Loki's path is anything but paved with good intentions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loki is as Loki does

**Author's Note:**

> It was supposed to be longer but at one point I've realised I'm dancing on the edge of stealing ideas from myself (i.e. from another, multi-chaptered fic I'm working on at the moment).
> 
> Still, I am rather pleased with the coherence, especially considering how purposely disjointed this little story is. I blame Loki, he stole my brain. I was supposed to write other things that week, not a crazy-you, crazy-me Loki fiction. That one's a real hijacker.
> 
> Anyway, without further ado, here is my Children's Day rather inappropriate gift to you. I hope you will enjoy it.

For the first few nights (months years _eternities−_ ) he dreams of storms.

He tastes thunder-air (the way it vibrated, thrummed, the way it felt like power and essence of life itself, destruction is life life is destruction pain sharp needles, _stop now−_ ). No. He tastes the thunder in the air, ozone-filled and thrumming with life and death (see? I can still form full sentences, logical sentences, even if the cut-out silver tongue won’t let me utter a sound that is not− No. Again). He tastes the thunder in the air, life and death rolled into one and resting on the tip of his tongue. (No). There is a drum-like sound echoing in the air (not enough have to save _breathe−_ ), thunder claps and he can hear flashes (light is pain is herald of sound is hurt, no− Wrong. Again). Drums echo in the air, fresh and rich with salty rain on his cheeks (tries to cry but can’t _can’t too late−_ ), stop. There is the sound of drums and then there is the patter of rain, thunders fork their way across the innumerable skies in ripples, streams of light and sound, rivers of doom (and _safety− Please_ ) that descend on His (No, must not, _don’t_ − don’t think that) Its enemies like a battering ram, like a hammer of the dying stars, a dead star in the hands of gold (No). Drums are accompanied by rain and bolts falling from the sky like rocks, sparing none in its– their– no, not quite, Hi– No. Again. Lightning rages with distant drums in the air rain falls Th−

In his dreams, the storm is coming every night.

He delights in it, a simple joy as he waits, impatient and (bound). He waits for it to come, and it always does, predictable and ruthless, unstoppable. He doesn’t know if it’ll bring him death or salvation. He hopes for both. He hopes for−

No. Again.

He hopes he’ll see how it destroys again.

The wind picks up, unfettered and wild. It tugs at him, pulling, never-to-be-denied. Strong like. Strong like wind. He dreams that he follows its call, its hissing demands to come, come.

He goes and steps into the abyss, down and down the unfurling, falling path, and he falls off.

The abyss swallows him, welcomes him home. It is devoid of any (air taste sound sight motion) life (save him, but then again, how true is that?).

So he makes up dreams of it.

***

Meanwhile, Loki plots. The creatures come to inflict pain. He barely notices. They come to talk. He ignores. They come.

Meanwhile, Loki plots and schemes. (If they won’t come to save him, they will come to stop him, yes? No? He thinks he knows). Firstly, though, he needs to relieve himself of his hospitable hosts. His capricious captors. His taciturn tormentors. His imbecile ichor-takers.

No, that last one is not quite correct. Wrong pantheon, mayhap?

Loki laughs, wild and free (mad as a hatter who lost his hat, tell me little hatter where is thy hat?). He chokes, spits out blood, grins an ugly grin of a savage beast. His monstrous heritage rears up its ugly head and further uglies him, leaves him an unrecognisable icy husk.

His salamandrine saviours. He looks like a bloody horse. A mess. He tries to wipe off his mouth. Bound hands. Ropes? Chains? Must focus. No, he does not know the material that binds his wrists. No magic. Can’t focus, not here. His purported puppeteers.

He can’t sleep, not here, never here. He’ll sleep when he comes home again. He imagines it: a triumphant return of the prodigal not-son and not-brother. That means that once, he was real. Once he was Odin’s son. Once he was a Brother of Thor and a Son of Frigga. He will be real once again. His abasing army. He’ll sleep when he dies. His Puck’s puppets.

There is a phantom pain spreading all over his body, he tells himself (a smith of lies, some call him, of words and words-behind-words like liquid silver, or like a silver thread that once, a lifetime ago, and not a mortal one, gagged his tongue on his not-Father’s command, and in a masterful feat, a Master tricking himself, he persuades himself to believe). It’s an afterthought of a feeling, a jagged shrapnel that was stuck in his head like a shrewish shrew shrewdly picking apart his thoughts one by one. It hurts and it never stops, never-ending, everlasting, all-consuming, _pain_.  

He tries to make a play of words, the ones which are still within his feeble grasp, before they too slip away like sacrificial wolves, merging into wordlessness. Sometimes he doesn’t succeed. An unnamed fear grips him. It too passes quickly when he gets bored of it. Time doesn’t pass here. Or it doesn’t care for Loki. He orders it to. There is no passage of time here, and yet he sleeps, he screams, he hurts with a new pain.

Loki does not yield. Loki plans and schemes, because Loki is as Loki does.

Meaning: Loki is Loki. End of meaning.

Finally, a break. Funny word, that. But never mind that now: they want something. He agrees, coyly. It is a study in seduction, a thing of beauty. Covered in blood, tethered like a mutt, Loki wins: he breaks to their demands and a God of Chaos, of Lies, the Destroyer of Worlds (not yet), the manipulator, is set free. He will rain his plans on all and sundry.

Somewhere, where he is going, it might yet rain. Loki laughs.

Dead as a dodo, no

matter what, know

you dear Loki

what do you plan?

***

He is only vaguely disappointed when he lands in a land of a desert. There are other things to focus on. Little bullets fall from the sky on his head instead of heavy water, and he is exhilarated, and he answers back, blue pulses sent to fell the helicopter and the men that fly on it.

And they fall oh-so-prettily (is there blood or smoke is there gutted flesh, are their bones sticking out of their limbs, any dying whimpers of pain, he’s too far away, can’t see smell hear) while Loki rides away (is that a correct form, he can’t remember the verb, so easy just a verb, to correlate with a metal beast, no, a car they call it, yes, that is right, but what else was there, he doesn’t remember never mind) on the back of a car. It is night.

When they finally stop in the place suggested by the little hawk-eyed archer, such a useful mortal he is, Loki orders his new-found minions not to bother him, Selvig (he is the Thunderer’s friend, he is, lucky Loki found him first this time, oh dear, can you imagine his face when he learns?, and he will, he will, he will come, surely. Loki knows best) begins to build a collared device that will relay the Tesseract’s power, the bird-named mortal strides briskly to organise men who would see this realm fall (he will tell them nothing, obviously, of their real purpose; they hate S.H.I.E.L.D. and that is what they will think will happen, that it shall fall apart, the oblivious monkeys. Loki laughs, laughs a laugh that can’t stop, not if it is to obscure everything that lurks underneath, and it does it does _it d−_ No. Never again, stop). Loki stalks around the base, a darkening shadow with bared teeth following in his wake, his never-restful companion that whispers such naughty things in his ear, and who is Loki not to listen? Loki laughs, thinking absently that it might not be the first time he has done so recently. None dare look at him, such good, obedient monkeys, chatter-chatter, _eek-eek_ , _hoo-hoo_ , _oo oo-ooh_ , _a-aah_ , and somewhere else on that dirt-rock they probably go _ouah ah ah hein_ or _ukiuki_ or _u-u-ah-ah-ah u-u-e-e_. The multilingual cretins. Loki narrows his eyes, purses his lips but they stretch into a grin when he remembers how the All-tongue felt when its superior words rolled off, how they formed in his mind and streamed like silver onto his tongue, from which they spewed out and forth, sneakily, in all directions, how they formed a spidery thin web, a thread of deceit and he, he for once stood in the centre, delighting in the chaos he was slowly making out of nothing, the most of innocent situations, the most good-intentioned people ending in strife between each other while he stood, in the shadow, in the shade of Thor’s glory (no stop what are you _doin−_ ) while he stood on the sidelines, gleeful, and watched as the disorder was conceived and saw that it was Good (he was once, what feels like eons ego but was probably no more than one, two thousand years greatly amused when he happened upon a very simplistic book on one of Midgard’s pantheons. He felt like finding his oaf of a _broth−_ He told Mother about it, because he found the idea of a god gifting all living creatures to a mortal, giving him, who was no more than an animal himself, the power to name them to be fairly amusing).

He blinks, perplexed, when he finds himself in an empty part of the complex, far away from his playthings. He is totally alone, which is good. He feels his former life splintering around him like a stained glass, and comforts himself in the silence. It will not be long now. The wheels are grindingly turning. Not long at all, surely.

It comes.

***

The construction of the device is slow-going. The brain-washed Selvig is starry-eyed and obedient, awestruck and quick to follow any instruction Loki might wish to send his way.

Loki does not wish it often. He tells him the barest of what he needs to know and lets him clumsily try to please, to figure it out. Idly, the God of Mischief plays for time, wanting all the pawns and kings to be where he wants them to.

Even if that means biding his time and waiting for them to deign to come to him. If nothing else, he has practise. Even if that means delaying the Chitauri’s plan as much as he dares while they press him for progress.

The progress is slow as it should be, his crooked silver tongue slithers. What comes out instead is, Everything is almost ready, servile words of their soon-to-be doom. And the vile, vile taste of copper as he bites straight through his tongue. All the better to lie to you, my dears.

Loki departs from their revolting presence, feels a pounding headache approaching like a not-quite-there storm. He longs for rain and the cool air. Instead he inhales dust and the stench of murky corridors. He walks alone, aloof and apart of soon-to-be dead inferiors. Loki plots, always.

The archer told him that he needs a distraction in order to... ah, ‘procure’ iridium. And an eyeball. Both shall be easy and entertaining to deliver. Fun, when was the last time he has had that? His dearest not-brother’s failure of a coronation? Killing Laufey (monster/father/snivelling beast/not his father)? Sending the Destroyer to Midgard and listening to Thor’s apologies and pathetic _excus−_ )

Loki tightens his hold on the spear, a grin of grotesque proportions stretching his thinner than ever lips. Enough of this nonsense. He will get this done, and he will reap the fruits of his venomous labour. Let them watch as horror strikes.

He journeys to Stuttgart, Germany and attends a pervasion of a gala: a sacrificial slab splashed with blood, a convulsing body already cooling on the white marble surface, violins stretching musical notes in the background and cutting to an abrupt stop (and Loki feels vaguely sorry about that, the dramatist in him longing for the whole performance effect – dramatic gestures, music and audience – no matter how much he usually chooses to utilise the underhanded, elaborate shadowy technique. Some acclaim would be liberating, he thinks. Oh, well. Another time, perhaps, another audience) and the screams that rise like an echo of themselves. All the beasts, no matter their pedigree and delusions of intelligence and language, return to their mutual origins when they scream. Terror demolishes their pretensions.

He follows in the screaming flock’s wake, corralling and cutting them off like the sheep they are. Lambs to be led to a slaughter. Soon, soon.

Then comes his prize and his trap, all wrapped in one. The Soldier. The Iron Comedian. The Black Widow with her ledger dripping with red. The first set is near full. Only the Beast is not here yet, but he suspects it is safely (hah!) stuffed away on the Flying Fortress.

The second set still misses the vital piece: but the Thunderer will find a way to come and save his precious Earth. Loki is counting on him, and he is so very good at fulfilling his predictions. Always, always following him like a puppet he was, Loki’s very own doll spun of golden thread.

In the distance a great thunder roars to life.

Loki smiles.

***

If there is one uncertain, unfixed variable in this scenario, it is this: Loki himself does not know how he will react once he is faced for the first time with his never-family. He can prepare, and he does so, extensively. Still, there is a – thrill, he would say, running the word at the tip of his tongue and over his dripping red teeth, when this final piece who is also a player arrives.

There is a flash of lightning, a resounding boom and then he is there, armour, red cape, hammer, gold-spun mane masquerading for hair and thunderous blue eyes. His grip on Loki is impossibly tight and Loki has but a moment to ready himself (one, two, three) and they are flying away, into the storm.

That is what Loki tells himself when all he can feel is falling.

The void stretches its claws and tears into him anew; there is no escaping the space that is between the worlds. It never gives back what it has claimed.

Thor does what the oafish bastard probably would call a landing ( _never any precision, isn’t that right, brother?_ ) but any remotely reasonable person would instead charitably call a crash into a conveniently placed piece of land. Well done, you.

Loki snorts. Then Loki laughs, a jagged shrapnel of remembered anew past stuck in his throat and ripping it to pieces. Loki laughs and can’t, can’t ever stop. Must not show what lies beneath, the chasm and nothing that remains buried somewhere there.

Loki dares not to look.

“Come home,” the golden god tells the darker. “We mourned,” he says.

Loki chooses not to listen, painfully aware of the lies even if his not-beloved-brother remains as ever oblivious. He could never lie, unless he did not know that it was a lie he was speaking. Oh, the mistruths Loki have placed, once upon a time, on that unsuspecting tongue! The gullibility, malleability, of the Asgard’s golden son always excited him so. It gave him unmitigated pleasure, even as he despaired of the other’s naivety and straightforward approach, to be able to tell him what to do and have him listen.

Of course, at the most unfortunate and ill-timed moments he chose to ignore the dark one’s council and do what he did best: smash and pound and throw and beat. Loki worried for him so. Helpful Loki, loyal Loki, obedient Loki. Loki who taught him a lesson at the price of his own betrayal. Good dog, they should have said.

Instead, of course, the two oafs had a shouting match and a mine-hammer-is-better-than-your-spear-no-it-is-not moment. Typical. Behold, Nine Realms: All-Father and All-Son having a father-son moment. How sweet. Lie there, mutt, and don’t get underfoot.

Went and spoiled everything, they did. For that, more than anything else, Loki despised them. Ruining his fun, spoilsports.

Ah. He’s talking, still. Worse: Loki kept answering while he... wandered away in thoughts. Must focus. Must have control.

He seizes it back and wrenches the Thunderer’s heart out of his chest with his words. He is hurt so easily: weak, wouldn’t survive in the void, or with the Other of the Chitauri clan. He is yours, though, and he won’t have to: you will be his void and his tormentor, a chip on his shoulder. Yours to hurt and to break.

Your tête-à-tête is rudely interrupted by the man in the iron suit. He barrels into Thor’s red-clad shoulder and sends them both spiralling down the ravine. Loki finds a comfortable place, a derisive audience of one. Watches as they fight among themselves, as the discord mounts. And as the trees, poor innocent fellows, fall around the defenders of Midgard. He would feel pity for the realm if he could feel anything at all. As it is, he jeers at the sidelines, hidden in the shadow. He smirks when the little show of manliness and ego is over and they saunter over to where he sits, reassured of their own importance. Really, will no one even wonder why he chose to stay, instead of hightailing it out of there when he had such a glorious opportunity handed to him on a platter? At least the Odinson should realise that with Loki, discretion is the better part of valour. He feels vaguely disappointed. None of them will offer him a challenge, will they? All is dull in Loki’s world. Dull and russet red.

***

After a necessary and inevitable beat-down, a flair of a battle, really more of a decorating effort than anything, (thwarted, as expected) Loki is at last defeated.

They should know that when Loki loses, Loki wins. He doesn’t know any other way. Convoluted is his way; and he has such conviction. He is amused how easily they believed in his ruse. Ruling Midgard. Why on Sleipnir’s hooves would he want to do that? No one ever understands what a plan within a plan entails, true. But taking the God of Lies at his word. That’s a level of imbecile he himself is surprised to find in those cretins. Unpleasantly, he might add; what one must do to find a worthy enemy? He accepted it as a good coin that his allies were easy to manipulate, once they believed him to be docile. But a stupid enemy is much more dangerous. Loki, after all, might and indeed prefers to work alone, betraying his secrets to none lest they prove fickle. But one cannot be without enemies.

Mayhap the Hanged God will prove to be different. He deftly ignores the hissing voice that whispers that the Raven God already beat him once at his own game. Such lies he tells himself sometimes. He should know better than to think he could pass a lie by himself unnoticed.

(No, Loki)

***

There is a trial.

Asgard’s golden hall shines like a beacon, the ever-bright star of stars. Loki is muzzled like a dog. Nicely done. It is time to show the monster its place. No more glamours spun between his eyes and his vision. And Asgard gathers, silent as a grave, to watch the once-prince’s disgrace.

Or the final act of it, as Loki has always been disgraced. They want blood, their blood calls for the sight of it, the warriors race. Slaughter the monster, their minds jointly cry. Their tongues refuse to utter it aloud in the face of the All-Father’s chilling gaze. All is solemn and gravely.

Underneath his fitted muzzle, Loki’s smile stretches into a long stitch like a scar. He is bowed; he is victorious. Asgard watches as he is pushed to his knees at the throne’s feet. He crashes down onto the dais, breath laborious.

“Remove it,” sounds a booming voice around him. (allowing him to speak, did no one tell the wise one what a darling mistake that was? no? maybe he should advise him to contact the Chitauri, they can tell him how fine a guest he was till they listened to his serpentine seductive words, how good he was, obedient and snivelling, pride-less, when he was laid down in chains on the grimy floor, drowning in his own blood and bile, how they almost managed to draw the poison of his heritage together with his lifeblood, out, out, out, _ou−_ No. No, Odin Borson. Nevermore.)

The gag is removed upon the King of the Spear’s command. Spittle and blood stretch between the metal contraption and the captive’s lips. Loki licks them, deliberate and slow.

They let him speak in his defence.

In his peripheral vision he sees the majestic Thor, stood proud on the King’s right hand. His gaze is focused elsewhere, far, far, far away, and a frown graces his noble features. Loki muses on how he could improve those chiselled cheekbones, claw at them, at the bluest blue of his eyes.

Outside the sun shines, not a hint of rain in the air. The god of Thunder refuses him even this. Fine, then.

Shall we begin?

***

Loki weaves his tale. Skilfully, not too elaborate, not to overdo, not to fall trap to his own honey words. He chants those instructions to himself while he tells a tale of darkness in the Chitauri’s realm. Of their mad rush for power, for war, for dominion. He says nothing of Thanos the Mad. He judges him to be too fantastical by far. He says how close they were to recreating the workings of the Bifrost and through it, they would spread war like a disease to all branches of the Ash Tree, even infect the Great Yggdrasil Itself. Loki was horrified. Horror-stricken. Worse, he was the only one who knew of those plans. And unworthy, fallen creature though he was, even he could not stand the thought of such a crime. His offence had been against Jotunheim, and even this – even this act was performed to protect Asgard from the approaching war that the Jotun King had declared. He has always served Asgard. Granted, his methods were not always commonly acceptable but were nevertheless genuine in their motivation. So he conceived a plan. He told the Chitauri of the Tesseract, told them where it was, what it could do. He spun an enchanting tale so that they would let him go, release him on a quest to Midgard to obtain the Tesseract. And he knew it was his only chance – to get to the Cosmic Cube and distract the Chitauri with their conquer of Midgard. They would be busy and they would stop watching him – if only for a moment, long enough for him to warn Asgard.

“I did not know how to achieve that, since I was sure I was banished. And the attack on Midgard was necessary to prove the threat was true, and not an invention of mine to get into your good graces.”

At the end, Loki smiles. Give them as much truth as possible to make it harder to sieve for the lies laid like eggs in the hay, dormant till they hatch.

(tell me dear Loki d’you know your own plan?)

***

There are only nights here. Months, years and eternities of nights alone. He fills them with dreams of storms.

(storm=Thor. Thor is storm. Storm is Thor. They are one. The storm always comes. Just wait and see. See? There it is, a darkening rage on the edge of the world, a new horizon looming, a rescuer gathering his strength. Thor=storm.

It is coming.)

No.


End file.
